


telling the toll to me

by swingingparty



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternia is Terrible, Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Death, Character Study, Eventual Relationships, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Meteorstuck, POV Second Person, Pesterlog(s) (Homestuck), karkat vs his infeority complex the size of the fuckin milky way, troll society
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23792314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swingingparty/pseuds/swingingparty
Summary: You could die for this. The realization hits like a punch to the stomach, sudden and unexpected.Your name is Karkat Vantas and your blood is candy-red, apple-red, target-on-your-back-type-red.You are three sweeps old when you realize you could die for this. And you probably will.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Kanaya Maryam & Karkat Vantas, Sollux Captor & Karkat Vantas, Terezi Pyrope & Karkat Vantas
Comments: 24
Kudos: 91





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> UM ridiculously long character study time bc i want to <3 i enjoy extensive going ham on canon narrative and i enjoy karkat so this happened ... idk what else to say but that...hope u guys enjoy this!! title is from something's missing by mgmt btw :-]

i.

You are three sweeps old when you first see a dead body.

It’s a low-blood—copper, you think, though you don’t stay around for long enough to properly discern—sprawled out on one of the highways. The troll's horns are snapped off, one buried deep in his chest, the other in his stomach, and there’s a trickle of blood running down from his nose into his mouth. Someone has pushed his body off to the side, underneath an abandoned vendor's station, leaving a thick trail of blood smearing the pavement. Everyone who passes tactfully avoids it, keeping their eyes down, heads turned. 

You had just stepped outside to get some food for the next few weeks. You had just stepped outside to do what you always do: keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, keep your hands in your pockets and your face as blank as you can.

You had not stepped outside to see a dead body. You had not stepped outside to have the back of your mouth suddenly burning with a sickening, coppery taste.

You had not stepped out for another reminder—as if you didn’t get enough of that everywhere else you fucking went—of what you could happen to you. Your horns are shorter, sure, and the troll is taller, bulkier, obviously older, but for a second, you can’t do anything but stand at the side of the road and look at him; if you squint, if the gloomy light hits just right, you can see your face in his.

You are three and a half sweeps when reality finally crushes down on you; this is not just mindless bitching from your friends, not just underhanded comments and superiority complexes you can ignore when you can and cuss out when you can’t. This is real. The blood running into the drain, staining the ground, hitting the back of your throat like a bullseye—it’s all real.

You could die for this. The realization hits like a punch to the stomach, sudden and unexpected. 

Your name is Karkat Vantas and your blood is candy-red, apple-red, target-on-your-back-type-red. 

You are three sweeps old when you realize you could die for this. And you probably will. 

ii.

Sollux Captor is your first friend. 

When you’re four and a half sweeps, you dig a computer out from the veritable dump of discarded possessions and other miscellaneous garbage—seriously, are the idiots around here never going to learn how to just captchalogue their shit like a normal troll?—that flows around the back of your hive. It’s sticky with something that smells like sopor slime and a dying cat had a baby and there’s definitely smoke coming out of at least three places smoke should not be coming out of whatsoever, but it’s the best you’re going to get. By now, seeing the dead bodies of lowbloods doesn’t give you a sick, horrified thrill of shock; you understand how this world works, and you understand very well what could happen to someone like you, so you only leave your hive and its surrounding area to get food when absolutely necessary. Purchasing a computer from a store would practically be a total rip-off at best and a literal death sentence at worst, so you grit your teeth against the smell and lug the battered box of wires and circuitry back up the hill and into your hive. 

You don’t do much for the next few days other than fuck around with it, rebooting old systems and cleaning out the hard drives stored on it. And getting rid of the smell. _God_ , the smell. 

After it’s up and running—if something can be counted as ‘running’ when you have to take period breaks from whatever you’re doing to go kick the wall its plugged into or else it starts to short-circuit and make freaky hissing noises—you spend the next week or so flitting around the internet, dipping in and out of chatrooms filled with trolls so idiotic you’re pretty certain it could be considered an offense against the state, bored out of your thinkpan. Finally you stumble across some coding software that doesn’t look like the worst thing in the world and try to run it. 

Five minutes later and your head is out the window, hacking out a series of coughs as smoke billows out from one half of the computer. _Motherfucker,_ you think, slamming your hand against the wall. _Useless-ass excuse for a piece of hoofbeat shit program._ Then, aloud for good measure, “Fuck!”

Irritation biting at your insides, you waft out as much smoke as you can and sit back down at the computer, opening the software forum. For a second you think about being calm, or at least some version of mildly respectful when you air your grievances. Then another series of coughs overtakes you and, before you know it, you’re pounding out a rather long paragraph letting these nooksniffing cretins know exactly how shitty their program is. In all caps. Because why the fuck not?

An hour later and one of the mod’s has responded—fucking _finally_. You throw yourself back down at the computer, slap the side of the monitor experimentally a few times and then squint through the glass at the lines of yellow text.

how the fuck diid you even manage two 2wear twenty two tiimes during that thiinkpan rotting rampage?

go the fuck outsiide bro iit2 not our problem your computer ii2 a piiece of 2hiit.

What ensues is an extensive argument between you and him, hitting on topics such as how it actually _is_ his problem that his stupid program nearly broke the only possession you have that keeps you from going clinically insane; how it actually _isn’t_ his problem, fucka22, and you should really invest in a better computer; the vaguer points of why you actually can’t invest in a better computer, YOU MORONIC EXCUSE FOR A BAG OF SHIT; why you should really find something to do that doesn’t involve you screaming at people on random servers you find online—2eriiou2ly, dude, get a fuckiing hobby or 2omethiing; how his typing quirk makes him sound FUCKING ASSBACKWARDS; how _your_ typing quirk makes you sound like a biitchy liittle wiiggler wiith a 2tiick up hiis nook; how you didn’t even want to mess around with his STUPID PROGRAM FOR DUNKASSES ANYWAYS; how that sounds a lot like something someone who was ju2t 2hiit awful at anythiing relatiing two technology would 2ay; how he is a smarmy jerk-off who double times as a colossal piece of shit and you hope he falls head over heels down a flight of stairs and busts his thinkpan open all over the floor.

holy 2hiit, man, he says as you two are nearing hour two of the fight, dont you thiink thii2 ii2 gettiing a liittle riidiiculous?

Privately, you’re relieved—you were running out of insults—and publicly, you put on a show of backing down, making it very clear that you would’ve verbally trounced his miserable ass if given even five more minutes to talk. 

iim 2ollux, he next message reads.

KARKAT, you type back.

lii2ten, man, ii can help you wiith the codiing 2hiit iif you want

iits hard two get the hang of iin the begiinniing e2peciially iif youre learniing by your2elf.

THAT DOESN’T SOUND TOTALLY FUCKING AWFUL, I GUESS.

god damn briing the enthu2iia2m down ii dont know how to handle iit.

YEAH, YEAH, FUCK YOU TOO, BUDDY.

It’s weird having a friend. Suddenly there’s something to _do_ every day other than wander around your hive and talk to your lusus and bootleg more shitty movies. 

Suddenly there’s someone who wants something to do with you, moreover, and that notion makes your thinkpan spin. What’s even better is that this situation you now have with Sollux—extensive communication through various forums and chatrooms—is entirely online; he doesn’t have to know anything about you that you don’t want him to. 

And that thought is nice. Nice because there are mutterings about the cullings getting worse, about the Empire trying to orchestrate a crackdown on any lowbloods they can get their hands on—you hear, vaguely, about some planetary conquest that went belly-up recently, and it seems like the Empire is trying to compensate for that; _weed out the weaklings,_ you’ll hear sometimes, and bite back a shudder—about the Imperial Drones not even bothering to knock before they break into hives.

So it’s nice to be able to keep this a secret, nice to know that you have a hand directly in how much information Sollux can find out about you, nice not to have to find a reflective surface to stare at yourself in every five minutes to make sure your eyes haven’t miraculously shifted from their usual slate-grey to bright red. 

It won’t last forever. You’re not an idiot; you know this much. But it’s nice all the same. 

iii.

You ask Sollux why his text color is yellow even though you already know the answer. 

It’s a popular thing among younger trolls online, you realize, to match their text color across all platforms with their blood. For highbloods, it’s undoubtedly another way to show off, to remind everyone who comes into contact with them just how _noble_ and _special_ and _fucking air-headed and snobby_ they are _,_ as if none of those were immediately discernible traits even the dumbest of wigglers could pick tip on after one minute of conversation; for lowbloods, it’s something of an act of defiance. A reminder that they’re there, that they’re not going anywhere, no matter what the castes or the Empire or Her Imperious Condescension says. It’s an admirable sentiment, sort of, if a little bizarre. You don’t know why anyone would advertise something everyone knows could get them threatening messages sent to their hive or fired from their job or laying in a ditch, face smashed in. 

You are five sweeps when someone tacks a letter to your door with an old Alternain term for rust-bloods written on it in large block letters. You burn it and then flush the ashes down the load gaper. You don’t leave your hive for the next two weeks, and every time you hear something outside, you press yourself into the corner of your respite block and think: _fuck, this is it._

Sollux, the nosy assfuck that he is, asks you why your text color is grey. troll2 dont have grey blood you know, he says, to which you say something along the lines of: NO? PLEASE, TELL ME MORE ABOUT THIS! IT’S NOT LIKE I’M A MEMBER OF THIS FUCKING SPECIES AS WELL, NOOKSTAIN. He tells you to calm down. You tell him to eat shit.

okay, okay, fuckiing chiill out ii ju2t wanted two make 2ure youre not 2ome 2nooty hiighblood who2 goiing two try and rat me out two the poliice or 2omethiing the 2econd ii 2ay 2omethiing wrong or whatever.

Which, of course, makes you feel like the biggest dick in the Empire, because of _course_ Sollux cares about this shit too; it’s not like he’s a member of the fucking nobility either. He gets it. You know he does.

And for a second, the desire to tell him, to bare your soul and wear your blood color on your sleeve for the first time in your stupid, miserable existence is almost overwhelming; you have to drop your face into your hands and breathe hard around the pressure forming in your chest. You want to tell him—someone, _anyone—_ so badly it hurts.

Your hands hover over your keyboard, fingers tensing, preparing to type out the string of words that’s been banging around the back of your thinkpan for as long as you can remember, and you’re going to tell him. You’re going to tell _someone_.

And then reality slams into you like a sucker punch. You ball your fists and let yourself feel so, so stupid for even considering that for a second.

You are five sweeps when your neighbor is murdered in his bed. Someone writes _watch out_ on the side of his hive in his blood, orange rivulets staining the ground a deadened brown color. You are five sweeps when another conquest fails and a gang of highbloods starts roaming around the heart of the city, armed with swords and shotguns; they call themselves The Hunters, and you aren’t able to buy food for a month. You are five sweeps old when Sollux messages you, asking directly for the first time in however the fuck long you two have been friends, what your blood color is, and why you’re so notoriously secretive about it. 

liike look who youre talkiing two bro.

you thiink my gold blooded a22 ii2 goiing two rat you out two 2omeone? iim on pretty thiin fuckiing iice a2 iit ii2.

You are five sweeps old when you realize that, if friendship means unfettered honesty, genuine trust, willingness to lay bare your deepest secrets for inspection, you will probably never have friends.

The thought makes you sadder than you can ever articulate.

I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK I THINK, ACTUALLY.

MY BLOOD COLOR IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. GET OVER IT.

You don’t talk to him for the next two days. When you finally come back online, he greets you as if nothing’s happened, and never mentions it again. Part of you almost wishes he would.

iv.

It’s not that you intend to be ornery, or grumpy, or flat-out mean. Sometimes Sollux will call you on it—holy fuck, KK, the off-yellow text will read, bored irritation almost dripping from the words, can you not be the biigge2t diick iin all of alterniia for liike fiive miinute2?—but more and more you’re starting to notice it yourself. Your tendency to fly off the handle, as it were, launching into aggressive profanity-ridden spiels on web forums or in chatrooms worsens; your approachability—if you ever had even the bare modicum of that, really—becomes virtually non-existent; your desire to pretend you give even half a flying fuck about anyone you encounter, online or in rare face-to-face moments, declines through the floor.

And it’s not that you _want_ to be this way, really. You want to be nice; at the very fucking least, you want to be nice enough so that you can have more than one friend to talk to when you get bored. It’s just—well, it’s just this: who you are can get you killed, and you know this. You’ve seen it, seen your own face in the now countless numbers of bodies you’ve seen, seen the blood around them shift from orange or russet or umber or gold shift into bright smears of candy-red. And maybe you’re fighting a losing battle—if you think about it, which you try not to, you realize there’s not a lot of _maybe_ about it—but you cannot help but try to stave off the inevitable. Why give people a reason to think you’re weak? Why give people a reason to think that you can be manipulated, toyed-with, pressed into giving up your secrets? Why give people the impression that they can even get close enough to you to try? Better to piss them off and send them running than to have another moment like with Sollux.

So it just happens, the meanness. You stumble through apologies when you have to, anxiously drafting paragraphs and then reading and rereading over them, chewing on your thumbnail, a sick worry building in the pit of your stomach because it sucks; it fucking sucks his you always back yourself into situations like this, lashing out at people you kind of don’t hate because you don’t know what else to do. You don’t _want_ to be like this, but you are, and you hate it.

It’s too late to change now, though, you figure, and then the troll from the hive across yours goes missing and the police don’t come to investigate even though you and at least three others saw her matesprit—a blue blood—hovering around outside with a tarp and a knife, and you figure that anger as a way to keep distance is probably the way to go, anyways.

v.

Despite your best efforts to establish yourself as the most unapproachable troll to ever have lived, Sollux manages to introduce you to all of his friends in record timing. 

Aradia Medagio is the first one you meet, probably because she and Sollux are weird pseudo-matesprits—a notion which he gets really testy about every time you so much as vaguely mention it, go figure. She is terrifying in a way that feels both deliberate and oblivious; one of the first conversations the two of you have is about the voices of the undead she hears in her dreams. The second one is about which movie genre is better: adventure—her take—or romance—yours.

You like her. You’re also very scared of her.

You also meet his _other_ pseudo-matesprit—honestly, this guy gets around—who is a literal princess. A genuine, honest-to-god fucking princess, heir to the fucking _throne of Alternia._ What the fuck. _What the fuck._

You spend as little time interacting with her as possible, even though she’s literally red for a gold-blood and also pretty open about the fact that she thinks the whole culling schtick is cruel and unusual. Whatever. You figure she’s either just talking out of her ass to kiss up to her lowblood friends while she’s still able to keep them or she really is just a whole new breed of naive. But she’s nice, though, and Sollux seems to like her, so you try your best to get over it. 

Your introduction to Feferi also brings about your introduction to the one and only Eridan Ampora, who is pretty much every single one of your worst nightmares rolled into the body of a ring-studded prick with a god complex the size of a solar system. He is smarmy and self-assured and treats Sollux like actual dirt for the fun of it which makes you want to punch him in the face at least once a day. You would, too, were it not for the fact that he, too, is a fucking sea-dweller—because your luck just can’t stop getting worse, really—and lives in the middle of the fucking ocean, or something. Whatever. Highblood prick.

Though you find, inexplicably, past the layers and layers—and even more and more layers—him to be something verging on tolerable at times. He can be funny, in a roundabout, sort of homicidal way. Funny to _talk to_ , at least; he’s the only one you know who seems to appreciate extensive discussions on the romantic endeavors of your mutual friends, even these conversations lapse into bemoaning on his part about Feferi not wanting to fuck him, or whatever. Sollux tells you that you two 2ound liike 2tupiid wiigler2 braiidiing eachother2 haiir and chattiing 2hiit about boy2 at a 2lumber party. You tell Sollux he should go fuck himself sideways, and that’s that.

Feferi also brings another troll into the group—you figure her rampant popularity is probably to do with being the only highblood in the Empire who doesn’t have a stick so far up her own ass she’s spitting out splinters—Kanaya Maryam. Kanaya is, refreshingly enough, not crazy. Her romantic life is a genuine shitshow—which you waste no time in roundly criticizing even before she knows who the fuck you even are; maybe not the best tactical move for making friends on your part, in retrospect—and she’s so high strung Eridan starts trying to get everyone to place bets on how many sweeps it’s going to take for her to snap and kill someone. But she is not on the spectrum of clinically insane, so you let yourself become something resembling close to her. She drags in Vriska Serket—who is, you are convinced, an honest-to-god psychopath—and Terezi Pyrope—who is way too smart for _anyone's_ good—along with her. Vriska cheerfully informs you that the two of you are actually somewhat resembling neighbors; she lives in the south end of one of the highblood neighborhoods which is just across the river from your communal dwelling. You then elect to spent what could be considered an inappropriate time lamenting the fact that, out of all the trolls you know, she had to be the one who you could actually come into face-to-face contact with without too much potential danger. When you bring this up to her in the middle of some convoluted argument—likely about her being a raging bitch with overly homicidal tendencies that are probably going to cause her a lot of shit in the future—she laughs for an inappropriately long time. Seriously. She sends you HA eight hundred and eighty eight times. It makes your computer crash. You spend the time waiting for it to reboot entertaining yourself with visions of you throwing the troll down the ravine in her obnoxiously large hive. When she’s composed herself enough to reinitiate the semblance of an intelligent conversation, she deigns to inform you that, actually, she’s _not_ your only neighbor. No, just across the way from her is Equius Zahhak, who is a familiar breed of fucking batshit insane. He beats up robots for fun, she tells you. Also has a bit of a thing against lowbloods. You give the guy as wide a berth as possible and are suddenly more in tune to the distant sounds of creaking metal you hear at night. His morail Nepeta is nice, though; shockingly so, considering the jumped-up, sweaty nookstain she spends most of her time time with. She has an extensive shipping chart for all your friends. Also, she’s really into roleplaying. Also, she’s obsessed with you.

Holy fuck, can your friends get any weirder?

You’re not sure when you meet Gamzee, really. Or Tavros, for the matter; the two are seemingly conjoined at the hip in a way that irritates you beyond description sometimes. The troll just sort of—starts showing up, and no one questions it. Maybe because of his caste, maybe because he’s one of the most genuinely friendly trolls you’ve ever met. It’s unnerving, honestly, how nice the dude is, how little he gives a shit about everything you wold expect from near-royalty; he just fucks around rapping with Tavros and gets off his ass on sopor slime and messages you multiple times a day about mOtHeRfUcKiN mIrAclEs BrO. It’s equal parts concerning—you just get a bad feeling sometimes, and you’re not sure why—and disarmingly endearing You make sure to call him a BRAIN DEAD LUNATIC as much as possible to compensate.

And then, seemingly just like that you have friends. You have people to talk to. You have people who _want_ to talk to you, whether it be because they’re conceited and hopeless at anything involving romance or genuinely good people who actually want to speak to you for whatever fucking reason. 

It occurs to you at some point that you don’t really know how to do this, this being _friends_ with people thing. With Sollux it had always felt easy, since your relationship had been founded off mutual bitching and pointless arguments; this, though, is different. More complex. More to handle, more to think about, more to worry. You force yourself not to worry whenever Eridan talks his ass off about fuckin lowwblood scum or when Gamzee idly tells you about how Equius has been crawling up his ass, demanding he respect the sanctity of his birthright and stop associating with the likes of their friend group like it's no big deal. You tamp down on raw, searing panic when Terezi messages you one night, cryptically going on about how YOU C4NT K33P S3CR3TS FOR3V3R, YOU KNOW THAT, R1GHT?—what does she know, right? How the _fuck_ would she know?—and instead tell her to SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GO BACK TO PLAYING PIRATES WITH VRISKA.

You don’t force yourself to be less mean. You don’t force yourself to be less cagey. You don’t even consider forcing yourself to hang out with them in person. You know the rules. You know the way the story will end if you do.

vi.

You cut your hand on a blade while looking for extension cables for your computer in the dump by your hive, and, before you know it, you’re walking back up the path, newly-found sickle in your good hand, wounded one stuffed deep into your pocket, teeth gritted around a backlog of pain and sickening fear. You’ve heard rumors that some trolls can identify blood types just by smell—which is ridiculous, you know it is; the only troll who has a sense of smell good enough to do that is probably Terezi—and you can’t help but panic a little as you make your way back to your hive. 

Once you wash it off, scrubbing away at as much of the grime and awful-smelling stains as you can, the end result of the weapon is a little disappointing: the metal of the blade is rusted and dull in most places, only retaining some of the wicked sharpness near the tip. The leather of the handle has long since fallen away, leaving nothing but bleached wood and fraying strings in its place. The whole thing is dented in the middle, like it's been thrown against a rock several times.

You set it down on the meal block countertop and stare at it, frowning. Despite the utter shittiness of it, the blade still catches in the light, edge glinting menacingly. There’s no way this could be used as a weapon—and that’s not even to mention how utterly fucked you would be if you were caught walking around armed without a permit—but it still does look cool, you have to admit.

When you were young—barely older than a wiggler, still not fully caught up on to the ins and outs of the fucking batshit Empire you’ve had the deepest regret of being born into—all you wanted to do was grow up and be a threshecutioner. There was something so seemingly noble about the job—what better way to live out your days that careening around the furthest reaches of the Empire, slaughtering anyone who posed a threat to Her Imperious Condescension’s reign? What cause could be more righteous than that?

Standing in your hive now, several sweeps older and a lot more fed up with Her Imperious Condescension and her fucking Empire, you can’t help but twist your mouth into a sneer at younger-you’s stupidity. Not only is that a pipe dream of embarrassing proportions—lowbloods aren’t allowed to serve as anything other than a footsoldier in the Imperial Army—but it’s such a bizarre realization that becoming part of one of the Empire’s most effective and ruthless groups of killers was a notion you ever entertained, even just for a second. 

You have long since come to determine that anger does not necessarily reflect the desire to kill. Which is funny, because as a wiggler, you always thought the opposite; trolls who killed for a job did so because they were angry, and since you were angry a lot, too, you would grow up to be one of the Empire’s millions of killing machines. It has just seemed logical.

And some days—most days, if you’re being real—you are still so angry it hurts, like a gunshot to the gut, the bullet slowly burning a hole straight through you. Most of the time, you’re not even sure where the vast, roiling rage comes from; it’s as if you’re acting on some sort of ancestral instinct, which makes no sense, really, saying as the ancestors are hoofbeast shit cooked up by highbloods to make themselves feel historied and impressive. Regardless, though, you can’t deny that the anger feels wholly removed from your conscious choices; it really does feel as if you are feeling someone else’s emotions when you get like that.

But angry as you might be and as frequently as you might be it, you are not a killer. It’s not something you really have to think about to determine; God knows you don’t need to test the fucking fact out in order to ascertain its validity; rather, it’s just something you know. You do not want to kill anyone. You do not want to hurt anyone. The thought makes you sick, which is stupid—how fucking old are you, getting queasy over thinking about spilling a little blood?—but you can’t help it all the same.

You eye the sickle one last time, huffing a little under your breath. Maybe in another version of events, where you weren’t the way you were, where the number of bodies you’d seen didn’t outnumber the close friends you had ten to one, where idle aspirations such as being a killing machine for the Empire were not inherently removed from the sphere of possibility by your birthright, you would’ve made an excellent solider. An excellent citizen. An excellent killer.

You're not, though, and as you turn to leave the meal block, hitting the lights as you do, a strange, small part of you almost feels relieved. 

vii. 

At a point, you thought you were in spades with Sollux. Then you realized you didn’t actually hate the guy as much as you wanted to, and thought maybe you were pale for him. Other days, it felt more red, but then Feferi and Aradia and all the other seemingly endless number of romantic interests he had came into the picture—ii got biitche2, KK, he would say, face fixed into what you could only assume was a smarmy grin—and suddenly it all stopped mattering. For a while, you hover between Terezi and Nepeta, feeling appropriately red for the both of them, but it won’t work out the way you want it to, either; your feelings for Terezi give you a headache every time you try to decipher them—plus she’s so obviously flushed for Vriska it’s obnoxious—and Nepeta hangs out with her scary-ass morail who hates lowbloods just a little too much for you to give her any real consideration. You sort of let the two endeavors fall through and don’t talk to anyone about it, not even Kanaya when she presses. Nosy ass.

You still get overwhelmingly jealous of Tavros sometimes, which is fucking immature and irritating and makes you want to stick your head in a bucket of sopor slime and start screaming. Why the fuck is it a big deal that he hangs out with Gamzee all the time? Why the fuck is it a big deal that the guy is so obviously flushed for him, and Tavros probably feels the same fucking way? Why the fuckdo you care so goddamnmuch about Gamzee sometimes when you _know_ it’s fucking hopeless and you _know_ that he doesn’t think the same and you _don’t know_ what quadrant you’re even talking about?

It’s an issue, you start to realize. Quadrants. When you talk about it with Eridan, or Kanaya, or whoever else feels the need to vent their bullshit romance problems on you all all hours, they always speak in such rigid defined terms. Eridan and Feferi are morails, yes, but he doesn’t like that; he’s flushed, he wants to be matesprits. Equius and Nepeta are morails—why, you couldn’t fucking say, but the point is they are and it makes _sense_ to them. Kanaya and Vriska are, too, and it’s just as fucking crystal-clear for them as well, even if Kanaya’s flush crush is so obvious it’s physically painful to witness. Vriska and Eridan hate each other’s guts in a way that would be poetic were they both not so stuck up their own asses about being the only ones among their friend group of have their kismessitudes figured out. Everything just falls right into place for your friends. The quadrants are defined and rigid and filled. Things just fucking make _sense._

You’ve heard about vacilitation—seen it happen in real time, for fuck’s sake—but this feels so, so much worse. The lines are too blurry, your feelings flip faster than Terezi’s dumb fucking decision-making coin, and just thinking about even filling _one_ quadrant makes you want to scream and you _don’t fucking know why._

You are five and a half sweeps old when you think there might be something wrong with you. 

viii.

\-- grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] \--

GA: Not That It Wasnt Deeply Entertaining To Watch Unfold

GA: But I Feel I Must Enquire After Your Wellbeing Following That Rather 

GA: Um

GA: Colorful Conversation You Had With Eridan On The Memo

GA: This Is Of Course Why I Am A Strong Advocate Against Memos I Think Things Were Much Better When We Were Not On Trollian And Did Not Have Access To Such Materials

CG: ERIDAN CAN GO FUCK HIMSELF SIDEWAYS. 

CG: I WANT NOTHING MORE THAN TO TAKE THAT SANCTIMONIOUS PRICK BY THE FUCKING HORNS AND THROW HIM INTO THE OCEAN LIKE A FUCKING FRISBEE.

CG: MAYBE IF WE’RE LUCKY SOMETHING WILL EAT HIM IN A MANNER THAT’S PAINFULNESS IS ONLY MATCHED BY IT'S AGONIZINGLY SLOW PACE

CG: AGONIZING FOR HIM, BY THE WAY. I FOR ONE WILL BE DOING FUCKING BACKFLIPS.

GA: Well That About Answered Every Question I Had On The Matter Of How You Are

GA: As Always Your Ability To Communicate So Much With Such Creative And Mildly Disturbing Metaphors Impresses Me

CG: I FUCKING HATE THAT GUY SO MUCH,

CG: HOLY FUCK.

GA: Is This Going To Be Another Kismesis Thing

GA: Because Honestly After Him And Vriska I Dont Think Anyone Is Emotionally Prepared To See Him Get Back On That Hoofbeast Again

CG: FUCK NO.

CG: THE AMOUNT OF RESPECT I HAVE IN MY BODY FOR THAT WHINY LITTLE TOOL IS FUCKING NONEXISTENT.

CG: JERK-OFF.

GA: Well Thats Some Good News At Least

GA: Though I Must Say From What I Have Observed Your Conversations With Him Have Been Particularly Bitter As Of Late

GA: Which Is Saying Something As Particularly Bitter Is Something Like Your Default

CG: REAL FUNNY, KANAYA. 

CG: HE’S JUST SUCH A

CG: UGH

CG: FUCKING BACKWARDS ASS NOOKHEAD WHO THINKS HE’S BETTER THAN EVERYONE BECAUSE HE LIVES IN THE FUCKING OCEAN.

GA: Okay So This Is About Blood Colors Then

GA: Because I Must Admit It Has Become Apparent To Pretty Much Everyone That You Are Notoriously Standoffish About The Topic And Eridan Is Similarly Nortious In His 

GA: Ah 

GA: Rather Disparaging Sentiments Regarding Lowbloods To Say The Least

GA: It Seemed Inevitable That You Two Would Butt Heads In Such A Manner About It

CG: HOLY MOTHER OF ASSBANGING FUCK, KANAYA. NOT YOU, TOO.

GA: Do Not Worry I Am Not Going To Ask

GA: I Feel I Can Rather Do Without The Profanity Ridden Rampage You Will Undoubtedly Go On Should I Do So

GA: It Just Seems Like A Logical Conclusion To Be Drawn Is All Im Saying As I Know Even Personally I Have Found Myself On The Edge Of Verbal Spars With Him In Regards To The Subject Matter More Than Once 

CG: YOU’RE A JADE BLOOD, THOUGH.

CG: ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, THAT’S NOT THAT BAD.

GA: That Is True

CG: SO LIKE,

CG: WHY THE FUCK DO YOU CARE?

CG: YOU COULD EASILY IGNORE HIM AND THAT WOULD BE THE BE THEN END OF IT.

GA: Why Do I Care

CG: YEAH.

CG: OKAY, IT SOUNDED LESS SHITTY IN MY HEAD,

CG: BUT YEAH.

GA: I Suppose If You Want To Talk In Such Binary Terms Then Yes Being Jade Blooded Is Not Bad

GA: But I Am No Nobility Nor Am I Anything Even Remotely Resembling Royalty

GA: In Fact I Would Wager That Were It Not For My Penchant For Reclusivity And The Important Role My Caste Plays In Caring For The Mother Grub My Situation Would Be Much More Challenging

GA: Which is Not To Discredit The Atrocities Faced By Those On The Lower End Of The Hemospectrum Than I But It Is Worth Noting That I Am Not Coming From A Place Of Total Lack Of Knowledge Or Understanding 

GA: Simply Put I Get It

CG: OKAY, SO WHY DON’T YOU JUMP DOWN HIS THROAT THEN?

CG: GOD KNOWS HE’S FUCKING TERRIFIED OF YOU ENOUGH FOR HIM TO ACTUALLY SHUT UP ABOUT IT IF YOU TOLD HIM TO.

GA: His Concerns Over Me Owning A Chainsaw Are Really Overblown Its Quite Amusing

GA: Its Not As If Im Waiting Outside His Hive Ready To Impale Him Like Troll Jack Torrance I Literally Do No Care About Him Enough To Do Him Any Serious Damage

GA: Purple Blood Is Notoriously Challenging To Remove From Fabric And I See No Point In Ruining A Perfectly Good Outfit For His Sake

GA: But To Your Question

GA: While I Acknowledge The Insensitivity And Outright Disgustingness Many Of Eridans Comments Regarding Castes Hold I Also Recognize That We Are Living In A Time Where The Traditions And Restrictions Of Said Caste System Are

GA: Faltering Somewhat If You Will

GA: That Is Not To Say Society As We Know It Is Dissolving Into Lawless Chaos Though I Do Think Lawless Chaos Would Be Infinitely Preferable To The System We Have In Place Now

GA: But What I Mean Is That Especially Among Young Trolls The Weight That Blood Color May Have Once Carried Is Fading Somewhat

CG: YOU’RE REALLY GOING TO SAY THAT SHIT LIKE HE DOESN’T TALK ABOUT “puttin a stop to all lowwblood scum an their filthy habits of procreation” OR WHATEVER THE FUCK HE SAYS DAILY?

GA: Has It Occurred To You Eridan Might Be Somewhat Of An Outsider Clinging To Antiquated Ideals Simply Because He Has Not Been Taught Any Other Reality

CG: I FEEL LIKE IT ISN’T FUCKING HARD TO DISCERN THE FACT THAT INTERMITTENT MURDER IS A BAD THING.

CG: LIKE I DON’T FEEL TOO BAD FOR CALLING HIM A FUCKING NOOKSUCKING EXCUSE FOR A LIFE FORM JUST BECAUSE NO ONE TAUGHT HIM YOU SHOULDN'T KILL PEOPLE BECAUSE YOU CAN.

GA: Okay I Feel Eridan Is Something Of A Moot Point

GA: And I Recognize That Violence Is Still Deeply Systematic Within Alternia

GA: But Among Younger Trolls Does It Not Seem To Be Getting At Least A Little Better

GA: Take Feferi For Example

CG: GOD.

CG: YOU KNOW THE SHIT SHE SAYS WON’T WORK, RIGHT?

CG: ALTERNIA WOULD FUCKING REVOLT IF SHE TRIED TO DO AWAY WTH THE SYSTEM OR MAKE PEOPLE START RESPECTING LOWBLOODS. SHE’D LAST FIVE MINUTES BEFORE EVERYONE WAS CALLING FOR HER HEAD.

GA: Perhaps But There Is Still Quite A Bit Of Time Before We Have To Be Proven Right In That Respect So It Is Possible Things Can Change

GA: And Does It Not Mean At Least Something That Someone Of Her Status Is So Willing To Openly Interact With The People That She Does On Top Of Preaching For General Tolerance And Compassion

CG: BUT HER TOLERANCE AND COMPASSION JUST COMES FROM THE SAME PLACE AS ERIDAN’S RAVING HOMICIDAL TENDENCIES REALLY.

CG: IT’S THE NOTION THAT LOWBLOODS ARE INHERENTLY INFERIOR AND SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE ABOUT THEM 

CG: WHETHER THAT BE CULLING OR “LOOKING AFTER,” IT’S REALLY NOT THAT DIFFERENT WHEN YOU GET DOWN TO THE FUNDAMENTALS OF IT.

GA: In Some Ways Dont You Have To Give Her The Benefit Of The Doubt Though

GA: And Consider That While The Rhetoric Behind What She Says May Have Somewhat Negative Connotations The Place She Comes From Is One Of Genuine Goodness

CG: EVEN IF THAT’S TRUE,

CG: IT STILL DOESN’T MATTER.

CG: TROLLS LIKE ERIDAN ARE ALWAYS GOING TO WIN OUT. THE SYSTEM IS LITERALLY BUILT SO THAT THEY WILL.

GA: Maybe

GA: But Maybe Not

CG: THAT’S SO INSUFFERABLY OPTIMISTIC.

GA: I Just Cant Find Comfort In Believing That Things Will Always Be This Way. Its Fundamentally Depressing

GA: Maybe Its Naive But 

GA: I Dont Know

CG: NO, I GET IT.

CG: I’M BEING KIND OF A JERK.

CG: SORRY.

GA: Its Fine

GA: Its A Complex And Difficult Situation Which You Are Hardly To Blame For So An Apology On Your Part Is Really Not Necessary

GA: To My Original Point Though 

GA: And Again I Must Stress This Is Not A Backhanded Attempt At Getting You To Reveal To Me Personal Information About Yourself Which You Would Rather Keep Private So Please Do Not Jump Down My Throat

GA: But Should Your Blood Color Ever Be Something You Wish To Discuss I Can Assure You There Are At Least A Few Of Our Friends Who Would React Positively No Matter What You Said

CG: WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE A THING THOUGH.

CG: LIKE COOL OK YOU GUYS WANT TO WEAR YOUR COLORS ON YOUR SLEEVES THAT’S FINE BY ME, I COULDN'T GIVE LESS OF A FUCK.

CG: BUT IF THE END GOAL IS TRYING TO DISMANTLE THIS BATSHIT ASS SYSTEM WE HAVE THEN SURELY THE FIRST STEP WOULD BE TO NOT MAKE SUCH A HUGE FUCKING DEAL ABOUT SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T EVEN MATTER.

CG: LIKE WHY CAN’T I JUST TYPE IN GREY AND NOT FUCKING TALK ABOUT IT? WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS WHOLE MELDING POT OF CONTENTION THAT I JUST DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT?

CG: LIKE, SURE, IT LOOKS SUSPICIOUS, WHATEVER. I JUST DON’T REALLY CARE.

GA: Is That True Though

CG: WHAT?

GA: Do You Really Not Care

GA: Not Being Complicit In A System That Is So Flawed As Ours In Whatever Way You Can Is Admirable Do Not Get Me Wrong But How Much Of This Is Really About That

CG: AS OPPOSED TO WHAT, EXACTLY? YOU THINK I'M ASHAMED?

GA: Are You

CG: … 

CG: YOU KNOW, I CAN’T COUNT THE NUMBER OF DEAD LOWBLOODS I’VE SEEN.

CG: JUST FUCKING EVERYWHERE NO MATTER THE CONTEXT NO MATTER THE SCENARIO NO MATTER WHO THEY WERE OR WHAT THEY DID OR HOW IMPORTANT THEY PROBABLY WERE TO OTHER TROLLS IN THEIR LIVES I JUST SEE THEM DEAD EVERYWHERE I FUCKING GO.

CG: AND YOU HEAR ABOUT SHIT LIKE THE HUNTERS AND IT’S JUST SO FUCKING ABOMINABLE THAT PEOPLE MAKE A LIVING OF GOING AROUND AND MURDERING INNOCENT TROLLS BECAUSE OF THEIR FUCKING BLOOD COLOR. LIKE HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT?

CG: AND YOU KNOW WHAT SURE I’M SCARED, I’M FUCKING TERRIFIED THAT I’M NEXT. BUT IT’S MORE THAN THAT.

CG: I *WANT* IT TO BE MORE THAN THAT. BECAUSE THEN I’M NO BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE AND I’M JUST PLAYING INTO A SYSTEM OUT OF SELF-PRESERVATION AND ASSBACKWARDS SELFISHNESS.

CG: I JUST WANT THINGS TO BE DIFFERENT. 

CG: WHY THE FUCK CAN’T THEY JUST BE DIFFERENT?

GA: I Dont Know

GA: I Really Dont Know

ix.

Somerimes, when it’s dark out, you’ll go for walks along the paths surrounding you and your neighbor’s hives.

Aside from the safety aspect of it—though there are always jumped-up lunatics wandering around, their numbers tend to decrease substantially as the sun goes down—it’s arguably the best time to be out and about: it’s fucking quiet, for one. There are no groups of wigglers to trip over, no matesprits being lovey-dovey and generally nauseating, no weird vendors camped on the sides of the road attempting to get you to fork over half your savings for some magical potion that’s going to make you live forever—who in their right fucking thinkpan would ever want to do _that?_

No, there's usually no one out. Just you.

It’s nice. You’re not sure if you prefer it that way—being alone—and trying to find the answer to that question always feels like you’re stepping into an emotional minefield, and you’re never quite that much in the mood to get your legs fucking blown off. But it’s nice all the same. 

x.

\-- gallowsCalibrator [GC] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] \--

GC: DO YOU 3V3R G3T 4 F33L1NG TH4T SOM3TH1NG 1S GO1NG TO H4PPEN SOON

GC: NOT N3C3SS4R1LY A GOOD OR B4D TH1NG

GC: BUT L1KE

GC: 4 TH1NG

GC: H3R3 1LL DO TH4T STUP1D TYP1NG QU1RK YOU DO

GC: 4 ***TH1NG***

CG: DID YOU SERIOUSLY MESSAGE ME JUST TO MAKE FUN OF MY TYPING QUIRK?

CG: IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING NIGHT, TEREZI.

GC: Y34H Y34H L1K3 YOUR L4M3 4SS 4CTU4LLY GO3S TO SL33P WH3N YOUR3 SUPPOS3D TO

GC: 4LSO NO 1 L1T3R4LLY 4SK3D YOU A QU3ST1ON

CG: I MEAN,

CG: NO? 

CG: WHY WOULD I BE HAVING PROPHETIC VISIONS OR WHATEVER THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH YOU?

GC: 1TS NOT PROPH3T1C

GC: 1 DONT TH1NK 4T L34ST

GC: 1TS MOR3 OF JUST 4 F33L1NG YOU KNOW

GC: L1KE D3J4 VU SORT OF

CG: OH.

CG: I MEAN, IN THAT CASE I GUESS.

CG: BUT ISN’T THAT JUST INTUITION OR SOME SHIT? WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?

GC: 1NTU1T1ON 1S BOR1NG THOUGH 3V3RY TROLL G3TS TH4T

GC: L1K3 OF COURS3 1 C4N LOOK 4T 4 S1TU4T1ON 4ND B3 L1K3 Y34H TH4TS GONN4 B3 FUCK3D UP 4ND H4V3 TH4T L1N3 OF TH1NK1NG B3 S3P3R4T3 FROM MY POW3RS OR WH4T3V3R 

GC: 3V3N MOR3 NUANC3D SH1T TH4N L1K3 B4S1C OBS3RV4T1ON TOO

GC: L1K3 1D G3T B4D F33L1NGS 4BOUT FL4RP S3SS1ONS 4LL TH3 T1M3 TOW4RDS TH3 3ND OF TH4T WHOL3 PH4S3 WH3N VR1SK4 ST4RT3D TO R34LLY GO OFF TH3 R41LS

GC: L1K3 1 GOT ON3 WH3N SH3 FUCK3D T4VROS UP

GC: 4ND 1T W4S OBV1OUSLY TRU3 4ND STUFF 1 W4SNT JUST M4K1NG 1T UP 1N MY H34D B3C4US3 DUH SH3 D1D WH4T SH3 D1D TO H1M BUT 1 F33L L1K3 TH4T W4S JUST GOOD OLD F4SH1ON3D GUT 1NST1NCT 

GC: YOU KNOW? L1K3 1 KN3W 3NOUGH 4BOUT H3R 4ND T4VROS 4ND TH31R DYN4M1C TO B3 4BL3 TO PR3D1CT SOM3TH1NG L1K3 TH4T W4S GONN4 H4PP3N 4T SOM3 PO1NT

CG: OKAY.

CG: I’M NOT FOLLOWING. WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE.

GC: TH4T K1ND OF STUFF W4S SO MUND4N3! 1 M34N SUR3 WH4T H4PP3N3D W1TH VR1SK4 4ND T4VROS SUCK3D 4ND 1M SUR3 1T W4S 4 WHOL3 B1G D34L FOR TH3M ON 4 P3RSON4L L3V3L OR WH4T3V3R

GC: BUT TH1S JUST F33LS D1FF3R3NT

GC: COSM1C

GC: L1K3 ON 4 SC4L3 W3V3 N3V3R S33N B3FOR3

CG: WHO’S “WE?”

CG: TROLLKIND?

GC: M4YB3

GC: 1T F33LS MOR3 LOC4L1Z3D THOUGH

GC: L1K3 3V3N MOR3 SO TH4N JUST 4LT3RN14

CG: OUR FRIENDS, YOU MEAN?

GC: M4YB3

CG: REAL HELPFUL, TEREZI.

CG: SORRY. THAT WAS UNNECESSARY. 

CG: I GET IT, COSMIC SPACE VISIONS ARE PROBABLY REALLY FUCKING WEIRD TO DEAL WITH.

CG: WELL, I DON’T GET IT, BUT YOU KNOW.

GC: Y34H

GC: 1TS F1N3

GC: TH4T W4S SUP3R V4GU3 4ND NOT H3LPFUL 4NYW4YS

GC: SORRY TO BOTH3R YOU

CG: NO, IT’S FINE.

CG: ARE YOU OKAY? YOU SEEM LESS MANIACALLY ENERGETIC AND FUCKING OBNOXIOUS THAN USUAL. IT’S KIND OF SCARING ME.

GC: 1 DONT KNOW

GC: 1 JUST H4V3 4 F33L1NG 4ND 1TS DR1V1NG M3 1NS4N3

GC: B3C4US3 1 SW34R 1 KNOW SOM3TH1NGS GO1NG TO H4PP3N SOON 1SH BUT 1 DONT KNOW 3X4CTLY WH3N OR WH3RE OR WH4T 1T 1S OR 1F 1TS GOOD OR B4D OR 3V3N R3L4T3D TO 4NYTH1NG 4BOUT US

GC: 1 DONT 3V3N KNOW WHO “US” 1S!

GC: BL44RHHH TH1S 1S STUP1D 1M G3TT1NG 4 H34D4CH3 JUST TH1NK1NG 4BOUT 1T 4G41N

CG: MAYBE YOU SHOULD GO TO SLEEP?

CG: LOOK AT IT IN THE MORNING WITH FRESH EYES YOU KNOW. 

GC: WOW 

GC: YOUR3 R34LLY M4K1NG BL1ND JOK3S? NOW? 1N MY MOM3NT OF N33D?

GC: J3RK

CG: GOD YOU’RE THE FUCKING WORST SOMETIMES WHY DO I BOTHER.

GC: H4H4H4H4H4H4

GC: YOUR3 PROB4BLY R1GHT THOUGH

GC: 1M JUST T1R3D 1 TH1NK 

GC: GONN4 CONK OUT 4ND S33 WH4T TH4T DO3S FOR M3

CG: ALRIGHT. KEEP ME POSTED THOUGH, OKAY?

GC: SUR3 TH1NG K4RKL3S

GC: >:]

CG: …

GC: COM3 ON!!!

CG: FINE, FINE.

CG: (:B

\-- gallowsCalibrator [GC] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG] \--

xi.

Sometimes you have dreams where you’re on a cliff face looking down. Wind buffets your sides, whipping your hair into your eyes, biting at the tips of your horns, and you unconsciously clench your fists at your sides. Below you is an ocean of searing redness, heat so strong emanating from it you can feel your face burning even from your vantage point. Lava.

The cliff face is crumbling, rocks falling down into the lava with faint sizzling noises. You never look around, but you know that, behind you, the ground is splattered with blood of all castes, a grisly tapestry of color.

You are never afraid in these dreams, though you feel you should be. At some point, you’ll look down at yourself and see blood on your chest, bright red, soaking through your sweater, and feel a little thrill. Not necessarily of panic, though the better instinct in you is screaming to _get the fuck out of there before anyone sees you, you idiot_ the second you see the stain. Maybe of relief. Maybe of excitement. Maybe just a thrill in itself. 

When you fall—and you always do—you don’t try and fight it. There is no thrashing about, no screaming, no closing your eyes and begging to whatever God is listening to you to save you before the impact. This is the way your story ends; you know this, and feel as if you have for a very long time. 

When you hit the lava, you feel nothing. You wake up in a jolt, sweating, hand immediately jumping to your chest to test for blood, even though there’s never anything there. 

You always forget the dreams within the hour.

xii.

TA: eheheheheh riight on but let2 2hut our mouth2 a 2second and talk about thii2 game.

TA: iitll only be a 2econd really you dont have two do two much.

CG: OK, GOOD, BECAUSE I’M PRETTY BUSY TONIGHT.

CG: WHAT IS THIS THING ANYWAY, WHY ALL THE SECRECY.

TA: well the 2hort 2tory ii2 that iit2 an iimer2iive 2iimulatiion that you play wiith a group.

TA: the long 2tory ii2 that the fate of our ciiviiliizatiion depend2 on u2 playiing iit.

.:.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no thoughts head empty just the number of friends karkat had watch suffer or die during the game and not be able to do anything about it except for tell himself he was solely at fault because he was the leader and supposed to stop bad things from happening :( ... man this shit makes me SAD! hope u guys enjoy it tho

xiii. 

You don’t know why you’re so pissed when Sollux tells you you’re not going to be the leader, but you are. So much so that you really let him have it, in all the embarrassingly bitter and blunt ways you know how to. It’s made only less of a shitshow by the fact that he plays right into it, rising to every baited jibe with a stream of insults of his own.

He tells you that he doesn’t give a fuck who the leader of the Red Team is—whether it’s born of his typical doom-and-gloom apathy or some bare vestiges of maturity he’s managed to drag up, you don’t know—and, realistically speaking, you know you shouldn’t care either. It’s just some lame-ass simulation game, after all; why does it matter so much if Terezi’s in charge? 

But it does. 

You walk into the conversation with her expecting a fight. She hands over the title without so much as a second glance. Sniff. Lick. _Whatever_. 

And you’re not sure why her and Sollux’s passiveness over the title bothers you so much either, but it just does. Maybe because you feel stupid now, sitting in your respiteblock, hands hovering your keyboard, frowning at the lines of teal and grey text for getting so worked up over it. It’s just a stupid game. It’s just a stupid, meaningless title for some stupid quest that you really can’t convince yourself matters all that much even with all of Sollux’s doom-and-gloom preaching. 

Except it isn’t.

You know the rules, and you know the restrictions, and you know that your whole life has been dedicated to playing it safe. Despite spirals of melodrama or self-deprecation, you know you don’t want to die, at least not by virtue of some jumped-up highblood who was just itching at the chance to lay their hands on you. That’s how people like you get killed, of course—reacting. Putting yourself out there. Practically painting a target on your back and telling everyone to COME AND FUCKING GET IT, and every waking moment—and quiet a few sleeping ones, too—has been dedicated to keeping the part of you that wants to rise up and scramble everyone’s attention and respect locked down tight. Putting yourself in a leadership position—and actively seeking it out, no less—is too small a number of steps away from literal suicide for you to feel even the slightest bit comfortable with it. 

But you still do it. And, dumb as rocks as you may feel for getting so worked up over it, you can’t help but let a grin spread across your face as Terezi concedes—man, she really didn’t even try to put up a fight, huh?—excitement buzzing through you from horn tip to toes. Maybe this stupid game is the opening you’ve been looking for—a way of pushing yourself out of the shadows, of assuming a position you want— _deserve_ , really. 

Maybe this is finally a chance to be someone other than Karkat Vantas, freak with the freak blood. 

A sort of giddy excitement courses through your limbs and you stand up to pace around your room like a wiggler who’s been kept inside all day. Finally, finally, fucking _finally._ A chance to be something— _anything_ other than what you are now. 

You hadn’t realized how badly you’d been looking for an outlet like this; sure, it was frustrating holing yourself up all the time and trying to stay out of sight—at least in the physical sense—but you’d never really realized just how much you were aching for an excuse to stop playing by your ass-backwards set of rules, or whatever. It’s not that you think you’re particularly well-built for the role of leader—in fact, the more you think about it, the more you’re aware of a sudden, dull panic starting to flare up in your chest—but it’s a change from how things used to be, how you _made_ them be, and that’s all you have time to give a shit about now.

So, despite the stilted worry, grandeur settles in easy. It’s probably a mistake not at least try combat it. 

Ten minutes later and Sollux is messaging you again, the _bitch_ , telling you you’re not playing anymore. the game ii2 bad new2, his messages read, and something cold and heavy starts to form in the pit of your stomach; iit wiill cau2e the end of the world, not 2top iit.

In the deepest depths of your bloodpusher, you know Sollux probably has at least a vague idea of what he’s talking about and you should definitely take that account with your following decision making process. On the surface, though, the only way you will allow yourself to interpret this is him trying to connive some backstabbing shit in order to advance his team ahead of yours, and it pisses you off..

You’re going to play the game anyways. Fuck Sollux. Fuck him for trying to take this from you—this one, stupid little thing you want.

So you run his stupid start-up code, ignoring the walls of yellow text telling you not to. You’re going to play this fucking game.

xiv.

It kills your lusus.

It kills your motherfucking lusus.

No, it—whatever _it_ is; Sollux bangs on about some mobiius double reacharound viiru2 that makes jackshit amount of sense when he tries to properly explain it to you—didn’t kill your lusus. _You_ killed your lusus.

You fucking idiot. You brain-dead stupid, stupid, _stupid_ waste of oxygen. 

You have no idea what to do for a very long time as you sit there, surrounded by partly-destroyed walls and broken glass and smoking clumps of rubble, for once not giving even half a shit about the attention the explosion has trobalt drawn from your neighbors. Logically speaking, you know this isn’t as bad as it looks; there’s still time and resources to prototype them as sprites, this isn’t goodbye, blah, blah, fucking blah. 

Logically speaking, this is totally fine.

Illogically speaking—which reads more synonymous with _truthfully_ in your head—you are sitting on the floor of your have with your lusus dead at your feet and there is not much room in your head for thoughts that don’t involve the general rhetoric of _you killed him you killed him you killed you fucking killed him you stupid fucking fuck._

There is no blood. Thank God there is no blood. You wouldn’t how to handle yourself if there was.

Your lusus’s skin is still warm when you lay your palm flat on it. You try to ignore how much your hand is shaking. 

Fifteen minutes as a leader, and look how much you’ve already screwed up. 

You stand up, rocking back on your heels, and swallow back a lump in your throat. No use crying about it like a wiggler; that’s not going to solve anything. You take one last look look at your lusus—white skin glowing a little in the perpetual gloom of your hive, a fairly peaceful expression affixed to his face, like this is any other ordinary night and you are simply watching him sleep—and exhale forcefully. Banish the image from your mind, shake your head to clear it of the ringing, grit your teeth against the inexplicable surge of sadness seeing your lusus on the floor like this sends through you.

You don’t have time to grieve, nor is there any point. Last time you checked, there’s still a game to play. 

xv.

When Jack Noir first shows up on your actual assbucket of a planet, your first thought is that he’s here to kill you.

Really, the imps were no big deal; they were all kind of stupid and slow and east to cut down, especially with the new sickle you alchemized— _take that, thresecutioners,_ you think as you use with with not a little vindication. The other shit you had to get through was simple, if mind-numbingly unentertaining: alchemizing supplies, haranguing team members, trying to figure out why whoever was in charge of making your land put the load gaper on _its own separate island_. You know, the usual.

But when the dude fucking _descends_ from the sky in a hazy swirl of black fog that makes you feel suspiciously dizzy when you inhale it, you’re certain that this is Game Over. A pair of white, slit-like eyes meet your own, and your whole body goes cold. Can you die in this game? Like— _die_ die? Does the screwy-ass programing really not let you move the load gaper back inside, but it’s totally cool with summoning some freak demon with scary-ass eyes and a tacky scarf befitting the likes of none other than Eridan Ampora, and then having said demon _kill_ you for good?

Awesome. That’s just so awesome. 

“Hey!” you snap at the dude; holy _fuck,_ are you going to go about this the exact opposite way you should. “I’m sorry, I don’t fucking remember putting a sign up that said ‘note to all bald demon entities: party at my place! BYO-fucking- _knife!’_ Did I?”

The dude looks deeply unimpressed. It’s kind of hard to tell, actually; his face doesn’t make for a lot of in-depth emoting. 

His knife glints at his side, and panic makes your mouth run even more. “Hey, _buldgewad!_ I’m fucking _talking_ to you!" 

You take a step towards him— _totally_ non-threatening, mind—and, before you have time to process it, he's lunging forward, knife point aimed right at you.

Knife point aimed right at your side, where it cuts through fabric and skin like butter, and you jerk back, hissing in pain. For a second your vision tunnels until all you can focus on is the burning at your side, the sting as air wafts against the cut, the rather concerning amount of blood that’s starting to spread out from the injury—

The blood—

The fucking _blood_ —

“Shit!” you snarl, clapping a hand to your side, the pain suddenly non-existent in the face of hot, searing panic rising in the back of your throat. “Shit, shit, shit, fucking assbanging _shit_ —”

The blood, the blood, your stupid candy-red blood; what were you thinking _,_ lunging at him like that? What the fuck were you _thinking?_

“Don’t—” you say to him, holding out a hand as if to fend him off, even though he’s remained perfectly stationary since his attack. “Shit—give me a second—don’t _look—_ ah, _fuck—”_

So naive. So goddam naive to think that this game would be _any_ different from Alternia. There’s still _rules,_ dunkass; there’s systems in place, lines you cannot cross, secrets you have to keep upon pain of death.

Holy shit, the dude is still looking at you. Intently. You can feel his gaze burning into you; more specifically, you can feel it burning into your side, where you’re desperately attempting to smother any sign of your blood by pressing one hand flat against the cut, angling your torso away from him in a position that probably looks as stupid as it feels. You do not mind whatsoever, though; you don’t care what you have to do so long as this tool _stops_ _fucking looking at your blood right the fuck now._

“Just—” You suck in a breath around the pain and hurriedly wipe your hand off on your pants before pressing it back to the wound. “Stop—fucking _stop_ looking at it for a second, just—just gimme a second, asswipe— _fuck_ —” 

Your assailant looks at you for a long, silent minute. Then raises the knife—

_Oh, shit._

_—_ and slices it across one ink-black palm.

You’re so confused that you abandon protestations against him looking at you and straighten up a little—ow, _fuck_ , that _hurts_ —staring at him. For a second, he remains immobile, staring down at his hand. 

Then he turns it to face you, and your heart drops through the floor.

Red blood is seeping from the wound steadily, dripping down his wrist in sticky, bright rivulets. The exact same shade of red that’s all over your hands now.

Candy-motherfucking-red blood.

He sticks out his bloodied hand, proffering a handshake of some sorts. His face is as blank as the second he arrived.

You know you should probable think about this more—at least figure out his name, for fuck’s sake—but the dizzying rush seeing someone of your blood color—your blood color; your one-in-a-billion-target-on-your-fucking-back blood color—right before your eyes turns off some of your finer decision-making mechanisms.

You feel a grin spreading across your face.

“Jack Noir,” he says by means of introduction, voice gravelly and smooth at the same time. His hand is still extended. 

And you take it.

xvi.

You could probably spend a million and one sweeps trying to ready yourself for it, but there’s really nothing you could do to truly prepare yourself for the sight of Sollux Captor’s dead body.

He looks smaller in death, somehow, skinny and fragile, almost, laying sprawled our across the transportalizer like a discarded wiggler’s doll. One of his arms is at an awkward angle, fist still half-clenched. Even though the pixels of your screen, you can see his bitten-at cuticles and the scars on his knuckles and chipped black nail polish. His glasses lay discarded at his side, his eyes wide open and unseeing, red and blue orbs reflecting the blinking lights from the computers around him, two tiny colored galaxies. Mind honey, or whatever stupid name he had given it, drips down his face, congealing underneath his eyes, on his chin, in the gaps between his fangs. The stuff splattered across his face makes his grey skin even duller, fading away in comparison to the nauseating yellow of the honey. You can see the arch of his brow, the slight circle his mouth forms, and you know he was surprised when it happened.

Surprised and scared.

Sollux Captor did not ever seem like someone who could get scared.

Sollux Captor did not ever seem like someone who could die, either, but here you are Standing here staring at his corpse with the stupid spiky hair and the oversized shirt and the cuffed pants and you feel oddly like there’s a bomb going off in your chest on repeat, shockwaves pounding through your body, tearing your insides to pieces until you’re left numb and empty, barely registering the way your vision blurs and then clears each time you blink. The wetness on your cheeks surprises you at first, but then you see Sollux’s stupid mismatched shoes with the frayed laces and the doodles all over the soles and suddenly you can barely stand as the sobs rip up through your chest and out your mouth in ugly, strangled gasps.

 _This can’t be happening, you think_ , and double up, whole body on fire with a new, horrifically blistering agony. _This cannot fucking be happening to me._

In the end, it doesn’t even matter. He comes back, and he’s fine, and you give him an appropriate amount of grief for scaring the shit out of you like that, and he gets all smug and annoying: aw, kk, you mii22ed me? that2 2o 2weet buddy.

But you don’t stop thinking about the image of him lying there, glassy-eyed and frozen for a long, long time. 

xvii.

As a Knight, you are first and foremost a warrior, wielding your aspect in the same way that Alternian legends of old under the same name might have once wielded their swords or spears or maces or lances or whatever—like a weapon. You are supposed to serve what there is little of: bonds, in your case—running conjunctionally with your aspect—the bonds between teammates, between players, between friends who seem more intent on destroying each other from the inside out than anything else. 

As a Knight, you are suited to making yourself something you’re not, putting up the front, raising the hackles, and diving right into a fight you are not equipped to win. It’s all about facades, about the smoke and mirrors, about keeping your secrets to yourself and your wall of anger at the ready for anyone who tries to pry. You are not built to win the fight you’ve thrown yourself into, but you’d be damned if you didn’t try.

As a Knight, you are a protector. It is in the nature of your class to sacrifice, to forego personal advancements for the sake of your team, letting them move ahead at your behalf. It is a sacrificial role, one that does not come without its faults. Self-preservation is a trait that must be forcibly learnt instead of inherently possessed; sometimes you find yourself disagreeing with this notion, because what has your life been other than one giant attempt at keeping yourself safe, right? But then, of course, you remember choosing to play despite Sollux’s—and your own internal—warnings; you remember your insistence putting yourself in the spotlight, being the leader; you remember Jack. And then it makes a little more sense.

As a Blood player, leading is very fabric of your being. You are meant to inspire, to motivate, to orchestrate cohesion among even the most fractured and unaligned of groups. 

As a Blood player, your strength comes from bonds. You derive power from friendships, from closeness, from a type of companionship that feels more foreign and strange and alien to you. You take this inherent ability of connection you are supposed to have and wield it like a sword, practically weaponizing the connections between your allies, turning your team into a well-oiled ass-kicking machine.

As a Blood player, combat is in your spirit just as much as being a leader is. You are born for a war, and you were born to fight in it, knee-deep in other people’s blood, armed to the teeth at all times. Hand-to-hand combat, tactics and strategy: these come as easy as breathing. At least, that’s what you tell yourself to think. Even when you’re sick and tired of fighting, even when it feels like it couldn’t be further from the truth, even as you have to close your eyes to clean off your sickle because the splatters of blood all over it make your stomach turn and your teeth set on edge.

You are Karkat Vantas, Knight of Blood. You do not know what you are doing in the slightest.

I Think We Are Given Roles To Challenge Us, Kanaya says in one of your stupid memos you can’t stop making, even though they continually just derail into you getting into screaming matches with yourself—because _that’s_ what the inherent leader in you is _totally_ supposed to be doing, yeah, good job, Vantas.  Ones That Dont Necessarily Suit Our Strengths.

You really hope she’s right, and everyone else feels as lost and confused and frustrated as you do now. Because you are starting to think you’re not a leader, not in the way you want to be. You don't have the slightest clue as to what’s going on; you’re not doing any better in the Game than anyone else around you; your friends barely respect you, and, honestly, with your memos and your mistakes with trusting Jack and your inability to even kill a stupid imp without feeling queasy, you can’t really blame them.

And you have known for a very long time that you are not the sort of people who others are supposed to like particularly. Much less form bonds with. 

Much less be _friends_ with. Real, genuine friends. It doesn’t work out that way for people like you. Not with your blood. Not with your big mouth and bad temper. Not with the laundry list of fuck-ups you manage to trip over at every available opportunity. 

It keeps you up at night, wandering around your planet, gritting your teeth against the barrage of melodrama your thoughts are cooking up. How close you are from slipping away from any semblance of following your classpect. How little you measure up to what you’re supposed too be, what you _want_ to be. How far you are from being a Knight of Blood, a _true_ one. 

How little of a grip you have on this team, this plan, this Game, and how it feels like more and more with every passing day, ever passing campaign, ever passing infinitesimal victory, that it’s all going to come crashing down around you.

xviii.

Turns out, after about three people almost dying, a frankly embarrassing number of fights between your past and future selves, and several major team dynamic breakdowns, you are actually not going to win the game. 

Of _course_.

If you’re being honest, it isn’t all that unexpected that things are going so majorly to shit now; you had talked to Sollux and had both expressed similar concerns over how—well, how _good_ everything was going. Multiple inter-team crises aside, no one had died permanently, Vriska had only fucked over, like, two people, which was a pretty big record for her, and everyone had made shockingly speedy process through the game.

TA: liike not two 2hiit on our team member2 but

CG: NO, PLEASE, SHIT ON THEM ALL YOU WANT.

CG: IT’S THERAPEUTIC FOR ME TO LISTEN TO.

TA: ehehehe 

TA: but no liike

TA: weve only been playiing thii2 for what, liike a month or 2omethiing?

TA: and were already about two beat iit giiven a few more day2.

TA: liike that2 mad iimpre22iive and ii know we have 2ome pretty experiienced role player2 whiich probably help2 but 2tiill 

TA: the rate were moviing at feel2,

TA: ii dont know.

CG: SKETCHY AS FUCK?

TA: yeah pretty much.

TA: liike

TA: how much of thii2 ii2 actually u2, you know.

CG: YEAH. I KNOW.

CG: SOMETHING’S UP.

Turns out, the one time you don’t want to be right, you are. Something _is_ up. Something stupid and confusing that makes jack amount of sense when Aradia tries to explain it to you—it had t0 happen, she says, which is infinitely less helpful than she probably thinks it is—and you’re planning on being pissed off about it for as long as physically possible, but then a spanner is thrown straight into the works.

A spanner by the name of none other than John fucking Egbert.

You assume, naturally, that Egbert is some sort of divine punishment for all your sweeps of being a huge bulgehead to anyone who ever tried to talk to you. It seems only logical. Kanaya tells you that That Is An Unhelpfully Self Pitying Way To Think Karkat And Honestly Theyre Not So Bad If You Talk To Them. Of course she would say that; she’s so obviously ass over nubs for one of Egbert’s lunatic friends who scares the living daylights out of you—seriously, she and Aradia would get along like a fucking hive on fire—it’s embarrassing to watch. 

Also, there is no point in talking to the weird aliens. Humans. Whatever they are. Literally zero point at all. Sollux backs you up on this, which is about as much confirmation as you need, even when Aradia’s hovering around in her freaky new robot body, muttering about inevitability and how we cann0t fight the c0urse laid d0wn for us karkat, which is about annoying as it is creepy. The point is, the humans are useless at best and head-achingly awful at worst. Seriously. They prototype an _unbeatable boss._ What dumbshit wiggler does that not _five fucking minutes_ after entering the game? They’re so incompetent you swear it makes you physically sick to interact with them.

And yet—because there’s always the _and yet_ —you cannot help but talk to them sometimes. You stick mostly to John and Jade becase the Dave human is so sardonic it makes you want to rip your horns off and you get enough interaction with smarmy misery-buckets talking to Sollux to comfortable with giving the Rose human a wide berth. Even as Kanaya starts bemoaning the fact that she's blowing up her gate, or whatever. Big whoop. Who cares?

Try as you might, though, you can’t help but start to think that there’s some weight to what Aradia’s been going on about—inevitability and necessity and all that. Trolling the humans oscillates between mind-numbingly irritating and outright infuriating, but underneath that, there’s something about that feels—right. 

Maybe right is the wrong word.

 _Fated_. There’s something about it that feels fated. 

xix.

The Dave human sucks. Objectively speaking

Like, seriously; it’s not even funny how much of a jackass the dude is. Sure, Egbert is—well, _Egbert_ , and Jade really does not like you for some reason— _her loss,_ you think not a little bitterly—and the Rose girl is, according to Kanaya’s frustrated and weirdly frequent updates, still blowing up her planet willy-nilly, but Dave is just the worst. The _worst_. 

Okay, so there might be just a modicum of projection going on there; it makes you feel really weird _,_ seeing him and Terezi get all buddy-buddy in record timing, and it maybe annoys you just a _little_ how effortlessly the two of them seem to connect with each other. Your annoyance is only increased at the sheer ridiculousness of the whole affair; one, your own feelings for Terezi are so backwards and convoluted you’ve elected not to think about the, for the next eighth sweeps, minimum, and two, even if you had settled on being in a quadrant with her, she’s allowed to talk to whoever she wants. It’s literally none of your business, and you feel shitty and stupid for getting so privately worked up about it. _God_ , who the fuck do you think you are, _Equius?_

Quadrant trainwrecks aside, though, that’s not even the real point; the fact of the matter is that Dave Strider is a tool of galactic proportions. He sucks, he’s stupid, he’s hitting on Terezi so much it should be considered a federal crime, you hate him, etcetera, etcetera.

Granted, you do only speak with the idiot once in some stupid memo with Egbert, but you’re pretty sure once is enough to garner any information you will ever need on him. You know he is smarmy and arrogant. You know he has one hell of a stick up his ass about Terezi being all over him. You know he wears the most obnoxious sunglasses in the entire known universe for no good reason—i got them for him! Egbert tells you; he thinks that they are really cool, i guess!—even when he’s wandering around in literal pitch darkness on his shitty hell planet. You know he has the distinct and honestly impressive—were it not to thinkpan-rottingly obnoxious—ability to take absolutely nothing seriously, even shit that actually should matter to him like the survival of his species which hinges entirely upon him _not hitting on Terezi ever again_ and having weird stupid human babies with _Jade_ instead. You know he is dismissive and irritating and thinks he’s way funnier than he is—honestly, fuck Egbert for feeding into his dumbass jokes. You know he thinks you’re _gay_ , whatever _that_ means. You know he _somehow_ knows about the disaster with you and your blackrom crush on Egbert that literally only lasted, like, a day, for fuck’s sake; part of you wants to ask Strider how he figured that out after half a conversation with you, but that would require admitting that he was actually right in the first place, and another thing you know is that letting Strider know he is right about literally anything is a one-way trip to inflating his ego to the size of a galaxy. And who the fuck needs _that?_

You are, of course, entirely content to never, ever speak to Strider again, even upon pain of literal death; honestly, listening to the guy’s convoluted ironic quips that don’t constitute as even the vaguest forms of comedy is probably worse than being shot between the eyes of you’re being real. You’ve got enough on your plate with Egbert running around at Vriska’s beck and call—seriously, of all the trolls, _Vriska_ is the one to get her claws into him? Wonderful—and Jade being—well, Jade. You do not need to add Dave Strider to the mix. You do not even need to think about adding him to the mix, Or think about him in general.

Then he dies. Well, some doomed version of him from one of the timelines he’s been screwing around in dies—throat cut by some weird dog version of Jack, the asshole—so it doesn’t really matter at all, actually, but he still dies. He still dies, and you really-not-that-subtly watch the whole thing unfold on Terezi’s computer screen. 

Because, okay. _Okay_. Look. You could give less of a fuck about some doomed version of some human getting his head lopped off by the crazy conniving bald dude, really. The amount which it matters to you is literally infinitesimal. But then Terezi starts crying about it. Like proper tears, sitting in front of her now-black screen, hands balled to fists in front of her, jaw clenched so tight you’re worried she’s going to grind her teeth down flat. And when you try and talk to her about it, she doesn’t even try to brush it off and keep up the pretense of nothing phasing her like she normally would; she shoves you in the chest and transportalizes out of the room before you can even call out for her to stop.

You could give less of a fuck about Strider, but if there is one thing you know about Terezi, it is that she is the best judge of character you know. And if this stupid human’s death that, again, _does not matter in any way whatso-fucking-ever_ bothers her _this_ much, then, well.

Well.

You sit at your computer screen for a second, privately allowing a moment for you to hate yourself as much as physically possible. God, you are so, so, so unbelievably idiotic sometimes. 

Then you open up a new message with the Strider jackass.

You’re not even sure why. You’re not even sure if you want to know why.

\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling turntechGodhead [TG] \--

CG: NOT GOING TO LIE, WATCHING YOU GET YOUR SHIT ROCKED BACK THERE WAS ONE OF THE TOP TEN MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS I THINK I’VE EVER SEEN.

He responds almost instantly, the prick.

TG: uh

TG: what

CG: YOU REALLY ARE STUPID. WOW.

CG: JACK NOIR JUST MURDERED YOU.

CG: WELL, A VERSION OF YOU, AT LEAST. 

CG: IT WAS FUCKING POETRY IN MOTION.

TG: oh yeah forgot about that lmao 

TG: im fine thanks for asking

CG: I COULD NOT CARE LESS.

CG: I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I ENJOYED THAT SPECTACLE YOU JUST PUT ON.

TG: man you are all kinds of crazy

TG: tell you what when this batshit ass game is finished i will find you a therapist because dude you sure as fuck need one

CG: I DON’T KNOW WHAT A THERAPIST IS AND I COULD LITERALLY NOT CARE LESS. IT SOUNDS STUPID AND POINTLESS.

CG: LIKE YOU.

TG: woah

TG: gonna need some ice for that sick burn ouch

TG: drop a glaciers worth of that shit on me if thats the kind of heat youre bringing because damn i dont know how im ever gonna recover from this

TG: shit is third degree yo 

CG: IT’S SO WEIRD HOW THE SECOND YOU START SAYING LITERALLY ANYTHING I JUST INSTANTLY DO NOT CARE ANYMORE.

TG: did you message me just to be a little bitch

TG: like was there any other point besides that

CG: NO, I MESSAGED YOU TO LET YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I ENJOYED WATCHING YOUR STUPID ASS GET KILLED.

CG: IF YOU’RE PLANNING ON HAVING ANY OTHER VERSIONS OF YOURSELF BRUTALLY EVISCERATED IN THE NEAR OR DISTANT FUTURE PLEASE LET ME KNOW AND I WILL CLEAR THE FUCK OUT OF MY CALENDAR TO COME WATCH.

CG: NOW FUCK YOU AND GOODBYE.

\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling turntechGodhead [TG] \--

xx.

The smell of blood hits you before the smoke clears.

Actually, it’s the smell of gunpowder that reaches you before even that. You’re slumped up against one of the walls of the computer room, dust in your mouth, ears ringing so loud you can’t even hear Eridan abscond; the only sign you get that he’s turning tail is the flash of the transportalizer in the middle of the room, nothing more, and your mouth is so full of the heady, acrid taste that you have to bite back a gag.

For a second, you can’t move; it feels like there’s some huge weight pinning you down, pressing you into the corner, standing on your chest until you give up protestations and simply lie there. You’re dazed, dizzy; even though you know you saw it all unfold, frozen with horror, you can’t quite remember what happened just now.

And then.

And _then_.

And then the smoke clears and the taste burns away and you are left staring at the charred remains of the computer room, scorch marks the side of hives lining the walls, broken glass and rubble strewn about everywhere, the floor painted a sickening tapestry of pink and jade.

Pink and jade.

Feferi—

 _Kanaya_ —

Your heart stops. Your heart just _stops_.

You have known Kanaya Maryam since you were five sweeps old. You know that she first cut her hair by herself when she was four sweeps old and has a scar on the back of her neck from where the scissors slipped. You know her favorite food is any types of fruit except for pears. You know she’s afraid of the dark and feels stupid about it—I Mean Really It Will Be My Job To Live In A Pitch Black Cave In Just A Few Sweeps So Feeling Nervous About Dark Environments Seems A Little Ridiculous. You know she loves 12th Perigee's Eve because literally nothing makes her happier than making gifts for all your dumbshit friends. You know her favorite color and her favorite movie and what she would have done with her life were the constraints of her blood color not a thing. You know she is funny in a dry, scathing way and sharper than fucking anything. You know she wants to help everyone around her. You know that she loves harder than anyone you know but doesn’t really know how to let herself be loved back in the same way. She has been by your side through virtually everything: spats with your friends, your endless quadrant troubles, nightmares about the notes on your door and the copper-blood running down the street. Good days and bad days and shit-awful days where the only thing you could do was log on to Trollian and beg her to just fucking talk about something— _anything_ to stop the spirals of fear or self-loathing or inexplicable guilt picking up in the back of your head. And she always did. She sat by your side and waited for you to lower your walls incrementally, enough for her to get a new story, a new piece of information, a new confession out of you, and then waited patiently some more as you retreated out of fear, or anger, or embarrassment at having opened up. Without question, without complaint

It is her blood on the floor now. Her body lying spread-eagled across the floor, mouth slightly open. Her who got caught in the crossfire, took the brunt of a stray bullet, a hole punched through her stomach as if she was nothing but a piece of wet paper.

It is Kanaya who is dead at your feet.

Your knees hit the ground before you’re aware of what’s happening. The pressure in your head has dropped; you feel both weightless and heavy, a second away from evaporating into nothingness. You can hear someone’s voice echoing around your head, loud, ragged, desperate; for a second, you think it’d Eridan, back for more, and a dull thrill of horror shoots through you.

But it isn’t Eridan talking, begging, stumbling over repetitions of OH GOD like they’re the only words he knows. It isn’t Eridan’s hands that desperately press over the hold in her stomach, trying to stem the blood flow even as her chest has long since stopped rising and falling, the look on her face slack in a hauntingly, achingly familiar way. It isn’t Eridan who keeps having to blink away tears because he can’t _see_ and Kanaya needs to get up, he needs to help her get up now so she can be okay and this can be okay and they can all go back to being fucking _okay_ and—oh, god; she’s dead, she’s dead, she’s really fucking dead.

It isn’t Eridan doing any of that.

It—of course, of _fucking_ course—is you.

xxi.

When Gamzee messages you off the shits on the new sobriety kick, you honest-to-god think you have never been more scared in your entire miserable fucking life. 

Nothing—absolutely nothing—you’ve seen or experienced or dealt with compares to the ice-cold flash of horror that shorts through you the second you realize what the fuck is going on; not the dead trolls by your hive, not the letter on your door, not even Eridan Ampora going off his rocks and killing half your friends.

Holy _shit_. You jam yourself further into the corner you’ve managed to find in one of the side rooms, pressing your face into your knees, and exhale as loudly as you dare. _Holy fucking shit_. Eridan’s killed half of your friends. Eridan has fucking _murdered_ half of your friends and is now wandering around fuck-knows where with a magic death wand and some unchecked homicidal tendencies. He has killed your friends and he will probably kill you the second he lays his eyes on you and _holy mother of fucking shit_ your friends are dead. _Dead_ dead. _Fuck_.

Somewhere in the distance, you think you hear a honk.

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking fuck_.

This isn’t supposed to happen. You’re fully aware of this, between ragged inhales, between sporadic postings on whatever memo you’re on now, between desperate stints of silence in which you strain to hear any sound of Gamzee—of your _best friend_ —coming towards you. No one is supposed to die—not like this, not for real.

Aradia is gone. Sollux is KO’D. Kanaya is dead. Feferi is dead. You’ve heard for absolutely no one else which means they are either dead or have started ripping leaves out of Eridan’s genocidal manifesto and Gamzee’s cracked-up murder pamphlet and started killing people, too.

This isn’t supposed to happen. Your head is swimming. You can feel your whole body shaking, nausea building in the back of your throat, adrenaline pounding through your veins. This isn’t supposed to fucking happen.

You were supposed to save them. You were supposed to save them all; what kind of fucking leader lets this shit happen? Who the _fuck_ did you think you were, taking on that title like it it was ever something you could even _remotely_ live up to?

You failed. You fucking failed them all and now your friends—the only people you have in your life, the only people you’ve ever fucking wanted in your life—are dead. Dead or fucking crazy.

_This is all your fucking fault._

Images of Kanaya float back to the surface of your mind, and a sob rises in your throat. You bite down on your knuckle and dig your nails into your thigh and have at it with Eridan’s past self, still wandering around LOWAR killing things he shouldn’t and feeling like all his friends have abandoned him.

And maybe you did; maybe if you had just been _better_ this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe if you had convinced Gamzee to get sober sooner instead of brushing off his problems like they were jokes like everyone else did he wouldn’t have snapped like this.

Maybe if you had just had even a _fraction_ of a clue as to how to be a good leader, a good person, a good _friend_ , this wouldn’t have happened.

SHE WAS MY FRIEND, you type to Eridan, throat burning; you can’t say her name, you can’t, you fucking _can’t_ anymore. SHE WAS MY REALLY *GOOD* FRIEND AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL TO DO NOW THAT SHE'S GONE.

Gamzee is a good person. He is kind and funny, soft and warm and welcoming even as you pushed him back as far as you could with serrated jibes and overt declarations of the distaste you never even came close to feeling for him. He has never wanted to hurt anyone, even if the powers his blood color vested upon him could’ve made it very easy to do so. He is kind. He is _good._

You don’t know how many of your friends he’s killed. And you don’t know how many he’s going to. 

You don’t know how many of your friends Eridan is going to kill, either. 

All the images in your head are saturated with jade blood, sticky and pooling. The room still reeks of gunpowder. You have failed so tangibly at every opportunity, lost so much because of how little you know how to do this, how little you know how to fucking _lead_ , and the real irony of it is you’re still left standing. You’re not the one paying for your mistakes; all of your friends are.

The people you care about are. Over and over again while you hide in the corner, crying.

FTC: i'm in your future, best friend. 

FTC: I KNOW WHERE YOU MOTHERFUCKING ARE.

You close the memo. You hug your knees to your chest. You do the only thing you can right now: start praying for a motherfucking miracle.

xxii.

You don’t do anything to stop her as Terezi comes up behind Vriska—stupid _Vriska_ with her stupid wings and obnoxiously orange outfit and her repeated insistence on fucking with everything she can get her nasty hands on; holy _shit,_ are you sick of her right now _—_ and plunges the sharp end of her cane right into her chest. 

You’re surprised, sure. Maybe even a little concerned. But you don’t do anything to stop it. 

Maybe you should. You’re sure there’s a better way to deal with whatever kind of blackrom shit has opened up between the two of them, but Gamzee’s messages are still floating around your head like haunting scraps of nursery rhymes and every noise you hear sounds like a honk and you cannot get the taste of jade blood out of your mouth, no matter how many times you stop to spit or throw up, no matter the fact that Kanaya is, miraculously enough, _alive_. The cards really chose a good time to start stacking themselves up, and you find yourself unable to move to stop things from unfolding because of it.

Because hey, you know, you’ve been a shit-awful leader this entire time; why break the streak and actually start doing the right thing _now?_

And, at any rate, you could not give a flying fuck about what happens to Vriska if you tried—knowing her, she isn’t even going to die permanently just because she’s an asshole like that. Still, you can’t ignore the shudder of—something that passes through you as Vriska crumples, knees hitting the hard rock beneath her before she splays put awkwardly on her side, eight eyes open and glassy. You chalk it up to general disgust at the heady scent of blood that’s already permeating the area and forcefully turn your sights on your main area of focus now: Terezi. 

She’s now standing stock-still, back to you, gripping the stem of her cane like her entire life depends on it. You can hear her panting like it’s the loudest sound in the world.

Whatever you’re supposed to be with her—pale, flushed, both, neither—there is the single, undercutting fact that Terezi Pyrope is someone you care about deeply. If John were here—well, if John were here, his first priority would probably be to make the situation somehow eighty times worse and eighty times better at the same time, all while being insufferable cheerful as he did so. But aside from that, he would probably tell you that Terezi Pyrope is your _friend_. Whatever the fuck that means. 

You aren’t concerned with John now, though, or with the stupid niceties of the human vocabulary. You are concerned about Terezi Pyrope and how her breathing is raspy and loud, how she is still not moving but her shoulders are shaking, almost imperceptibly. 

Her letter is still gripped in your hand, you realize; Gamzee’s blood smearing against your palm. It makes you feel dizzy if you think about it, so you don’t; instead, you drop the letter to your side and walk up right behind Terezi.

She turns to face you as you pull up. Her face is frighteningly blank. You can see her jaw clenching and unclenching as she looks at you, then back down at Vriska, then back up at you again.

“I—” she starts, and, _fuck_ , her voice is rough and shakier than you’ve ever heard it. Your bloodpusher twinges. “I didn’t—”

“It’s okay,” you say, half-holding out your hands in what you hope is a placating gesture. You know how to deal with Terezi on almost all other fronts—excited, grouchy, semi-prophetic, sick of you and all your shit—but this raw, searing anguish you can feel starting to pick up around her is so entirely different from anything you’ve faced, and you’re terrified you’re somehow going to fuck things up even more. “It’s okay.”

She shakes her head, light catching off her glasses. “No,” she says, looking back down to Vriska’s body again. “No, I—I didn’t want to—I—”

“Terezi—”

“I had to!” She drops her cane suddenly, practically throwing it across the ground like she can’t bear to be in contact with it anymore. You can see her hands shaking. Your throat feels tight. “I had—she was gonna fucking kick his ass, and—I saw it, it was gonna—everything was gonna—you and I, we would’ve fucking _died_ , but I—” She shakes her head again. “I didn't—fuck, I didn’t want to kill—”

And then her voice gives out, crumping away like a piece of paper and you’re closing the distance before you’ve fully processed what you’re doing. She sort of just collapses into your arms, burying her face into the crook of your neck, her hands gripping at the back of your sweater. For all her usual energy and exuberance and general lack of volume control, Terezi cries in a way that is so tired and so quiet it feels wrong. The backs of your own eyes are burning as you wrap your arms around her waist, pressing your cheek to one of her shaking shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” she gets out between shuddery breaths, the words jagged. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

You run a hand up and down her back. “It’s okay,” you mutter. “Terezi, it’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

She doesn’t shake her head at that, but you know she doesn’t believe you. You don’t know what else to say to help—part of you knows there really is no _way_ to help; this is just another addition to the laundry list of shit she’s experienced in this hellscape of a game, and there’s nothing you can do to make it better, or reverse the action, or to at least take the shittiness away. 

There’s nothing any of you can do for each other, really. The shitstorm this game seems intent on inflicting upon everyone is personally tailored to each member of the party, unique in its personal description for them. 

You watch as Vriska’s blood slowly pools out on the ground beneath her: cerulean, striking, the color sharp against the dull grey of the rocks around her. Even in death, she finds a way to stand out, obnoxiously so. It makes you more upset than it probably should.

You close your eyes.

xxiii.

PCG: I THINK I GAVE HIM CANCER.

PCG: I GAVE YOUR WHOLE UNIVERSE CANCER, JADE.

xxiv: 

“Well, that certainly could have gone much worse,”

Still on edge from the narrowly avoided shitfest that would’ve been a five-way fight between you and basically all your friends who haven’t been brutally murdered yet, the sudden sound of Kanaya’s voice at your shoulder nearly makes you scream. Or stab her. Or just pass out—seriously, with the fact that it feels like it’s been an entire sweep since you got some decent goddamn rest, that’s not too out of the question. Instead, you settle on flinching hard and whirling around to face her.

“Fuck,” you say, pressing a hand over your chest. “Is sneaking up behind everyone one of your new rainbow drinker kicks now, or something?”

Kanaya gives you a very tired smile. “That has yet to be determined. I will keep you posted, though.”

You study her for a second. Her dress is new—kind of fancy for the occasion, considering as all you have to do now is waste some more time in the Veil and then go meet up with the humans at the Green Sun—the deep red standing out stark against the endless shades of grey that make up the backdrop behind you. Her eyes are glowing like two miniature suns now, bright yellow, her gaze even more piercing than it used to be. Her whole body is glowing, too; you assume it’s some new freaky rainbow drinker thing and elect to not give her shit about it. The air of tiredness about her is palpable; something tells you that it runs a lot deeper than the simple fact that she’s no longer able to sleep anymore. Though, honestly, she looks pretty good from someone who just came back from the dead.

Oh, yeah. Dead. She died. Kanaya died. You were there. Didn’t really do anything about it. Almost got killed by your best friend right after. Right.

Your bloodpusher clenches in your chest as you slam the trap on that rapidly unraveling train of thought and fix your stare somewhere above her shoulder. For some reason, you just aren’t able to meet her eyes right now, and it’s definitely not because they’re glowing.

“I’m sorry,” you tell her collar bone. “For the whole, uh, shit. With Eridan. And not doing anything to stop him. And letting you get killed. And then letting Gamzee take your body. And generally being a shit-awful leader.”

She huffs a little. “Gamzee didn’t take me, so that particular apology is null and void. As for everything else, I—Karkat.”

You hum in acknowledgement. 

“Please look at me.”

Oh, man. You really don’t want to do that. You know if you do, you’ll probably start crying, and God knows you’ve already cried more today than in, like, the past two sweeps; any more and you’ll probably just shrivel up and keel over from dehydration. 

But there’s something unusually insistent about Kanaya’s request, a strange note to her tone that forces you to wrench your gaze way from her shoulder and meet her eyes.

She looks sad. She looks really fucking sad.

You don’t know exactly how, but you’re sure it’s your fault.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she says like she’s reading your thoughts aloud—another rainbow drinker thing? Holy fuck, you hope not Her voice calm and measured. “What happened with Eridan was not your fault.”

“See, you say that, but then it’s—”

“Karkat.”

“Yeah?”

“Please shut up.” She exhales, pressing the tips of her fingers into her eyes for a second. Her bone-white skin makes the faint purple stains still coloring her hands stand out in vicious contrast, and your stomach clenches a little. Kanaya had been vague when describing what had transpired between her, Gamzee, Vriska, and Eridan, but you know it had ended with a lot of blood being spilled. 

You chew your lip for a second, wrestling guilt back to a manageable level. “Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault."

“But—”

“I killed him.” Kanaya’s voice is flat. Now it’s her turn to look anywhere but you. “Eridan. I killed him.”

You figured as much, honestly, but the revelation still hits like a punch to the neck. For a second, it’s hard to keep the narrative on Eridan as the genocidal lunatic who murdered two of your friends and fully intended to betray the rest of them to the very boss you’ve been trying to _kill_ for who knows how long; your mind keeps flicking back to him as your arrogant, kind of bitchy but fundamentally okay friend who, despite all his promises of lowblood annihilation, never seemed truly capable of hurting anyone.

“Yeah,” you finally say, and, wow, that is just about the least adequate response to Kanaya’s very palpable—if very forcefully repressed—distress. God. “I mean, I figured as much, saying as we’re all still alive and Jack hasn’t made fucking kebabs out of us, but—” You swallow. “You did what you had to. God knows if I had gotten ahold of him—”

And all you can think about is gunpowder and jade blood and LOWAR for a second. All you can think about is the bloodstains on Kanaya’s hands. All you can think about is self-assurance and magic wands and a angry boy turned into an even angrier killer. All you can think about, again, for the billionth time, seemingly, is how this all comes back to falling on your head. 

“—you know,” you finish, a little lamely. 

Kanaya just sighs, shaking her head. “I never thought it would be like this.”

“What?” _Killing?_

“The Game.” Kanaya passes a hand over her face. “I didn’t—I didn’t think it would so—I don’t know. Violent. I thought it was supposed to be different than—than Alternia."

And all you can think about is blood and bodies and the morail you don’t know how to even begin helping. Suddenly, you are so fucking tired that you don’t even realize you're starting to collapse into Kanaya until it happens; you go half-limp as your face presses into the crook off her neck, arms comingn to wrap around her waist. You feel her chin drop onto the crown of your head, her breath ruffle your hair at uneven intervals.

“I hate it here,” she whispers, sounding more miserable than you know how to handle.

You swallow, nose prickling. “I know.”

“What are we supposed to do now?”

You mirror her earlier sigh and close your eyes, just for a second. “Keep playing, I guess,” you say into her shoulder. It's the last thing you want to confront as the truth right now, but you know there's no avoiding it, really, not anymore. “Keep playing the fucking game.”

.:.


End file.
